We met in 1992 in Taiwan, and briefly again some years later in Vancouver. Recent years experienced sporadic meals together (in a group) when either of us visited California. Always short, and usually just a single meal.

But yesterday, I had the unique opportunity to spend a whole day with her. Our day at Point Lobos was mainly to chat and to take photos of everything that State Reserve had to offer: sea, sky, birds, cliffs, rocks, plants, sea lions, sea otters, poo. I learned that she's a lot more pragmatic about her photography than I am. I snap-snap-snap and then weed out the bad ones later on at home; 1GB+ storage gives me that luxury. She snaps a picture, reviews it, and decides if a second one (or replacement) is warranted; every one of her photos is a gem.

Before the end of the day, we were out of battery (three batteries' worth), out of storage (hers), and desperately trying to ration our photo ops, hoping our batteries would magically charge themselves up. I was mostly satisfied with the views we captured, but apparently she wasn't, because she's heading out there again today to finish off her collection!

It's been years since we were able to spend some time to resync on our individual lives, on our future plans, our hopes. It was nice to reconnect on a level that we had before, to laugh (mostly at me), to just be there on a gorgeous day with truly beautiful company. But I fear it may be years before we'll enjoy such a day again, as our paths take us worlds apart.

6 comments:

Why do names matter so much? You don't know her; I know that already. What's important is the time that we friends share together, not what titles we have, how many letters we hold behinds our names, or which names we know each other by.

Yay! Nice to hear of your time together. I need to start doing that, too, before I leave, but there is so much else still to do. :( Nevertheless, I'm heading up to Whistler on Sun, mainly so we can eat at the Roadhouse. Lots of my memories with friends involve food. :)

It's really nice to catch up with old friends and see where their lives have taken them. Sometimes it's just nice to be in their company, even if no words are exchanged. That's how it was for parts of the day: no words, just the sounds of steps through the trails and digital cameras snapping photos.